DEALBOOK; Senate Gives White Its Unanimous Consent for S.E.C.

By BEN PROTESS

Published: April 9, 2013

Ms. White, a former federal prosecutor who spent the last decade defending JPMorgan Chase and other big banks, secured Senate approval by unanimous consent. Ms. White is expected to join the agency in the coming days, replacing Elisse B. Walter, who has led the S.E.C. since the departure of Mary L. Schapiro in December.">

Ms. White, a former federal prosecutor who spent the last decade defending JPMorgan Chase and other big banks, secured Senate approval by unanimous consent. Ms. White is expected to join the agency in the coming days, replacing Elisse B. Walter, who has led the S.E.C. since the departure of Mary L. Schapiro in December.

Her arrival at the post comes at a time of transition for the S.E.C. and the public markets it regulates. The agency is under pressure from Congress to complete new rules for Wall Street and take aim at financial fraud. It also most confront the growing world of high-frequency trading, a business that continues to confound the agency, and money market funds, which the S.E.C. is seeking to rein in.

On Monday, industry groups applauded the Senate’s move. “Her long experience and notable accomplishments as an advocate for the public interest will serve her well in her new role as S.E.C. chair, carrying out the agency’s vital missions of protecting investors and overseeing our capital markets,” Paul Schott Stevens, the chief executive of the Investment Company Institute, a trade group representing money market funds, said in a statement.

The Senate’s move on Monday was widely expected. Ms. White won broad support last month from the Senate Banking Committee, which voted 21-to-1 vote in her favor.

Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, cast the lone vote against her, citing her turns through the revolving door that connects government and private practice. Mr. Brown expressed concern that Ms. White, who represented JPMorgan in financial crisis cases and Morgan Stanley’s board in vetting a chief executive, could carry conflicts of interest.

“I don’t question Mary Jo White’s integrity or skill as an attorney,” Mr. Brown said at the time. “But I do question Washington’s long-held bias toward Wall Street and its inability to find watchdogs outside of the very industry that they are meant to police.”

To sidestep potential conflicts, Ms. White will recuse herself for one year from most matters involving former clients. She further vowed “as far as can be foreseen” never to return to Debevoise & Plimpton, the firm where she built a lucrative legal practice.

Ms. White’s supporters also point to her long tenure as a prosecutor. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York called her “tough as nails” during her time as the first woman to serve as United States attorney in Manhattan.

As a federal prosecutor in New York for more than a decade, she helped oversee the prosecution of the crime figure John Gotti and directed the case against those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She also supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

With Wall Street, Ms. White has already signaled a hard line.

“It will be a high priority throughout my tenure to further strengthen the enforcement function of the S.E.C.,” she said at her confirmation hearing last month. “It must be fair, but it also must be bold and unrelenting.”

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO: Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor, is expected to join the Securities and Exchange Commission in the coming days. (PHOTOGRAPH BY T.J. KIRKPATRICK/GETTY IMAGES)

Ms. White, a former federal prosecutor who spent the last decade defending JPMorgan Chase and other big banks, secured Senate approval by unanimous consent. Ms. White is expected to join the agency in the coming days, replacing Elisse B. Walter, who has led the S.E.C. since the departure of Mary L. Schapiro in December.">